For instance, a mechanism for raising and lowering a windowpane of a motor vehicle has a structure such that a slider base fixed to the windowpane is supported to be movable up and down on a guide rail, fixed to a structural member of a door, and that a drive wire(s) extended from the slider base in the vertical direction is wound around a wire guide member and a wind-up drum, respectively provided at the upper and lower ends of the guide rail. A motor unit is connected to the wind-up drum, and driving the wind-up drum forward and reverse by the motor unit causes the slider base, together with the windowpane, to move up and down on the guide rail.
The motor unit and the wind-up drum are supported by a drum housing, and the guide rail is mounted and fixed to this drum housing. Japanese Patent Publication No. 4,637,522 describes forming the guide rail so that it includes a flat portion and a raised portion by bending the guide rail to have a predetermined cross sectional shape and forming a fitting groove on the drum housing in which the flat portion and the raised portion are fitted as a technique to mount the guide rail to the drum housing.
However, according to the technique described above, there is a possibility of a fitting failure of the guide rail to the drum housing occurring because the mounted state of the guide rail to the drum housing (the fitting state of the guide rail to the fitting groove) cannot be visually checked.
To visually check the mounted state of the guide rail to the drum housing (the fitting state of the guide rail to the fitting groove) in, e.g., the technique described above, a special solution such as providing the drum housing with an inspection hole is essential, and it is inevitable that the structure of the drum housing becomes complicated and that the cost becomes high. In addition, formation of the inspection hole in the drum housing deteriorates the strength of the fitting portion of the drum housing into the guide rail, so that the drum housing is easily damaged. Additionally, when the guide rail is mounted to the drum housing, how the relative movement between the guide rail and the drum housing is restricted in the vehicle widthwise direction is an important technical problem.